Further to my earlier post about the Glama and Dranga plateaux in Iceland, I found this satellite image which shows a terrain (Glama) just beneath the glaciation limit. Probably the picture was taken in spring or early summer -- I would guess it was May. Or maybe we are seeing the first winter snows, in October? See the earlier posts, dated 9th Jan 2011 and 11th Jan 2011. Anyway, this is a nice illustration of what a great deal of Southern England might have looked like through many of the cold phases of the Pleistocene -- most recently during the Older Dryas and Younger Dryas, when a lot of snow -- in depressions and valleys and against escarpments -- might have survived from one winter to the next, with parts of the "snow blanket" melting out each summer when average July temperatures will have been around +10 deg C.
6 comments:
Brian,
You keep tantalizing me with such pictures! Imagine that lake to the bottom left of this photo frozen and you have a picture of what I argue.
You write,
“... during the Older Dryas and Younger Dryas, when a lot of snow -- in depressions and valleys and against escarpments -- might have survived from one winter to the next,...”
This is also what I am saying! You reject my theory, but you embrace my ice! How interesting!
Constantinos
That's not a lake -- it's the sea, in one of the huge fjords of NW Iceland. The plateau is at 500 - 970m, which is why (when this photo was taken) it was above the snowline. The fjord was created when this whole landscape was inundated by thick glacier ice -- and the process probably went on over several glacial episodes.
Much as I love glaciers and glacier ice, there's no way that your ice makes sense -- and there's no way I can embrace it, given what I know about glacier behaviour and ice dynamics! Please stop trying to reinvent physical laws, Kostas -- and as I have suggested many times before, please do some reading on glaciers and how they behave.........
Brian,
O.K. That's not a lake, it's a fjord! Do fjords freeze in a 1000 years of freezing 10,000 years ago? Lake is not the point. Ice is!
You write,
“Please stop trying to reinvent physical laws, Kostas ...”
Hmm! Are you referring to my physics papers posted at the same site as “The un-Henging of Stonehenge” paper? The results in those papers (as controversial as my theory on Stonehenge) earned me an invitation to coauthor a chapter on an upcoming Thermodynamics book!
I am now waiting for an invitation to coauthor the next chapter on Prehistoric Archeology! I have other bombshells in the works!
Constantinos
There is not the slightest bit of evidence of the fjords of the west coast of Scotland freezing in the Younger Dryas or at any time since the collapse of the British - Irish Ice Sheet. The sea remained stubbornly liquid, I'm afraid.
It's a free world -- best of luck with your thermodynamics book and the one on prehistoric archaeology!
How excellent.
But, but, but, with global warming will this be but a fleeting accolade soon to be replaced by a wall of dry stone.
Congrats John.
GCU In Two Minds,.
Well, John Glacier has been there for quite a few million years, so it'll probably still be there when my grandchildren pass on their memories of their eccentric grandpa to their grandchildren..... hope so, anyway!
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